


Monster

by vampaya



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-17
Updated: 2016-05-17
Packaged: 2018-06-09 02:29:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6885469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vampaya/pseuds/vampaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Azula is released into the custody of a familiar friend years after the avatar captures her; the reunion is less tender than expected. </p>
<p>"What good was she without bending, without her crown, without her legions cowering at her feet?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

"Say it," Azula commanded, tightening her grip on Ty Lee's wrists.

"No," Ty Lee said firmly.

Azula made a noise like a snarl, pressing the smaller woman deeper into the mattress of the bed, watching as the acrobat sank into the red sheets like a body into a pool of blood. Ty Lee squirmed underneath the weight of Azula's body pressed hard against hers.

"Say it," the firebender hissed, squeezing her hands and grinding Ty Lee's bones against each other.

"No," Ty Lee said again, although her voice trembled this time. "Azula, please. That hurts."

Azula narrowed her eyes, wishing she could crush Ty Lee's bones between her fingers like dry sticks, or at least burn her into a pile of ash for refusing to follow orders. Even if the Avatar hadn't bent her energy and, in effect, destroyed her ability to bend, Azula wondered if she could ever hurt Ty Lee so irreparably. Seeing Ty Lee's defiant, petulant expression, the disgraced princess decided that, although it was unlikely that she could kill Ty Lee, she could at least teach her a very painful lesson.

Ty Lee. Beautiful, light-hearted, traitorous Ty Lee who was supposed to be rotting in a prison. Treacherous Ty Lee who always somersaulted away from her problems and immersed herself in a new group so she could escape herself when she was overwhelmed. Unfaithful Ty Lee who betrayed not only Azula, her princess, friend, and- whatever else she was, but her home, her country by fleeing the Fire Nation and dressing herself in the green of the rotting vegetable that was the Earth Kingdom, and smearing her face with circus grease paint to join the Kyoshi warriors. Ty Lee the traitor, who sought Azula out after the war, pleaded and begged with Fire Lord Zuko (Azula wanted to spit in his face) to let Azula leave the asylum, promising that she would take care of the broken bender, insisting that Azula was harmless now that she could not bend. Ty Lee who, for some ridiculous reason or another, must have expected absolution and adoration upon freeing Azula, who only laughed and spat, "You should have left me to die." What good was she without bending, without her crown, without her legions cowering at her feet? She was as worthless as any nameless peasant, and just as unworthy of life. Her fire was trapped inside of her body, collecting and swirling within her chi pools with no outlet, just as her body had been trapped within that cell in the sanitarium with no escape, enduring tiresome visit after tiresome visit from the Avatar and the dirty water peasant woman who tried to heal her and make her better (steal her bending, her fire, her lightning). They were just as disillusioned as Zuko to think that there was something wrong with Azula; there was nothing wrong with her. There was something wrong with them.

Azula spent the first day screaming, railing and raging until she could taste blood and feel her throat fraying from abusing the guards and cursing her brother and the stupid water peasant.

The first week was steeped heavily in her shrieking rants, which fell away to silence only when her voice gave out. By that point, she had run out of things to say anyway.

The month after that was spent in dead silence.

The room (prison cell) they kept her in had padded walls, which not only kept Azula from injuring herself but from breaking out. ("She's insane," the water peasant whispered, looking at Azula pityingly. "Angry, unjustly incarcerated, betrayed, hurt, enraged, scheming," Azula spat, "but never 'insane'.") It was cold in the room (cell) to keep her from bending, should the energybending somehow have become faulty, and Azula could see her breaths as clearly as clouds in the sky when they pushed her back inside after her healing and rehabilitation and energy bending (bending destruction) sessions.

The years had worn her down, exhausted her. Her rage had given way to a murderous, plotting silence, which was foolishly mistaken by Zuko and the others as acceptance or surrender, acknowledgment of her defeat. The kindness she received at the hands of her captors, including her healing sessions with the South Pole harlot and regular visits from the Avatar confused her beyond the threshold of any confusion Azula had ever felt before. Had their roles been reversed, had she been the captor instead of the captive, she would have been standing over their prone bodies, crowing with triumph as she tortured them. Even Zuko (and Mai, too, although the knifeslinger never once looked Azula in the eye for fear of what she might find there) came to visit from time to time, mostly at their mother's insistence. Iroh came too, offering her tea and long, boring games of pai sho and wisdom that she was all too loath to accept and resentfully ignored. Ursa sometimes came by herself after she she was brought back from exile, and she would sit outside of the bars separating her from her daughter and tell her, "Your eyes are so like your father's." Azula would always laugh bitterly at that.

"Where is your husband now? Where is your rightful Ruler and your Princess? In prison, like common criminals. And you sit there, self-righteous and pristine like you had nothing to do with this, like you don't owe me a thing, like you shouldn't set me free like any good mother would."

Ursa gazed at her daughter from behind iron bars, pity clearly writ across her gently aged face. Azula scoffed, glaring at the older woman through half-slitted eyes, wondering if she'd even bothered to visit Ozai in his cell. The broken bender had heard that her father's cell was even worse than hers.

"Really, mother, I'd much rather you just hate me than pity me."

And then there was Ty Lee.

The day that Ty Lee had appeared, Azula thought she actually had gone insane, and very nearly did- with rage. Ty Lee was dressed in her Kyoshi robes but had recently scrubbed her makeup off.

"Azula," Ty Lee said softly, leaning against the bars and reaching a hand through them like a child might at the zoo while trying to pet a dangerous animal.

Ghosts behind her eyes roared, a haunting of her past glory that had never quite been exorcised. It made her look lean and hungry and cold as she sat in strangely thunderous silence as her breath escaped her lips like smoke.

"Traitor," Azula said flatly, catching Ty Lee's tremulous gaze and holding it unwaveringly like a tiger-snake with its fangs in a moose-rat.

Ty Lee flinched and whispered, "Please talk to me."

Azula crossed her arms over her chest and eyed the Kyoshi warrior without bothering to veil her sneering contempt.

Green. Like an old head of cabbage to be fed to animals, like grass to be crushed underfoot, like stagnant water people would rather die than drink.

"I talked to Zuko," Ty Lee explained, and Azula noticed for the first time that the acrobat's voice had been worn rough by the edges of the past five years, that her large eyes had lost some of the roundness that youthful naivete had lent to them. "He said he would let you go."

"How kind of you to take time out of your busy schedule of doing cartwheels and playing dress-up with the Kyoshi warriors to convince darling Zuzu to set me free after five wonderful, delightful years beneath his stinking foot," Azula snapped.

"Azula, please," Ty Lee pleaded, clutching at the cell bars tightly. "I tried, I did. I've been trying, but he refused to even see me until recently. Please believe me. He's letting you go. We can leave. We can start over."

"Unlike you, Ty Lee, I lack the desire to blend in with whatever crowd will have me. I stand alone. There is no starting over for me."

Ty Lee chewed her lip furiously, somehow maneuvering her shoulder through the bars far enough to gently brush Azula's cheek with her fingertips. The touch brought back a deluge of memories: playing together as children, Ty Lee giggling and saying she wanted to be the Fire Lady when Azula became Fire Lord, riding side-by-side on mongoose-lizards while hunting the Avatar, Ty Lee sneaking into Azula's tent at night to brush her hair and massage the knots out of the princess' tired muscles, Ty Lee's mouth following the path that her fingers beat against the firebender's warm skin, those same digits jabbing her in the back to paralyze her, grey eyes meeting gold eyes as Azula collapsed to the ground and glared past Mai at Ty Lee. Azula cringed away from Ty Lee's touch. Ty Lee frowned, looking as though she were struggling with herself.

"I can give you back your bending," she whispered. "I can try. Azula, please. Just leave with me. I'll take care of you. I need you."

Azula's eyes widened and she stood, thinner and leaner than she was in her youth but just as fast, just as strong. Although she could not bend, her captors did not deny her the freedom to exercise and practice her forms and stances from time to time. Her muscles tingled with something akin to excitement.

"My bending," she thought hungrily, missing the electricity and the heat and the power and the rush.

She pressed herself against the bars, holding Ty Lee's face between her hands and fighting an odd tug in her chest as the acrobat's eyes swam with tears. The prodigy was unsure what the tightening in her chest was: affection for the acrobat, eagerness and interest at the promise of her bending being restored to her, or both. She leaned down, allowing her lips to brush Ty Lee's as a gasp fluttered out of the brunette's throat like a wounded bird. A tear slid down Ty Lee's cheek and wetted Azula's.

"What do you want, Ty Lee?" she breathed against the shorter woman's lips.

"Nothing, Azula."

"Don't be stupid. You can't want nothing."

"I don't want anything from you," Ty Lee murmured, kissing Azula desperately, reaching through the iron bars, and twisting her hands into the simple shift Azula was wearing.

"Liar," Azula whispered.

"No," Ty Lee persisted. "I just want you."

"You owe me," Azula said simply.

They had a small house on Ember Island, and a strange relationship. Ty Lee gave, Azula took. Ty Lee tried feverishly to restore Azula's bending, Azula demanded faster results. She had to admit, however, that she felt the slow trickle of her chi become more and more like a river with every chi-unblocking session. Soon, Azula could feel fire swirling like a storm inside her body, trapped within its fleshy walls with no way out. Of course, Ty Lee's hands pressed to Azula's body to other reasons. The disgraced prodigy was unsure whether she was using Ty Lee or Ty Lee was using her. Ty Lee negotiated Azula's release as penance and gave her a place to stay, a bed to sleep in, food to eat to soothe her aching conscience. Azula agreed to go with Ty Lee because it was more interesting than the asylum (prison). It took very little time for Ty Lee to begin fawning over Azula and for the somewhat more subdued woman to begin to bask in it, and it took very little time after that for the kisses to begin again. These kisses were different from the awkward, exploratory kisses that Ty Lee had pressed against Azula's mouth when they were younger, from the time of their childhood until her betrayal.

"It's for practice," Ty Lee giggled, resting her hands on the shoulders of Azula's heavy armour in quarters they had shared at Ba Sing Se so many years ago. "Besides, it's nice, isn't it?"

"I suppose," Azula grumbled grudgingly, wrapping Ty Lee's braid around her hand and pulling.

Ty Lee slid into Azula's lap where she sat at the vanity removing her Kyoshi impostor makeup, green skirts bunching as she wrapped her legs around the bender's waist and kissed her. The door creaked open and Mai's dry gasp was cut short by Azula calmly ordering her to get out and learn how to knock.

That was then. That was when the kisses stopped at kisses. This was now. This was different. This was something else entirely.

There was an odd force behind these new kisses that was very similar in nature to Azula's chi: it began as a trickle and became a foaming, roaring river.

When Azula first discovered sex, she treated it like a firebending technique: something to be drilled to perfection. Ty Lee often found herself tied to the bed, sweating and panting and begging to be untied, begging to touch Azula. Azula always refused. She was indebted enough to Ty Lee, she wasn't about to give the acrobat another thing to hold over her head. She never let Ty Lee touch her, and Ty Lee spent nights writhing and crying out with Azula's hand and mouth pressed between her legs and her nails clawing at the smooth, strong planes of muscle of Azula's back and shoulders.

This night was one of those nights, although the sex was tinged more heavily with malice and anger than usual. Ty Lee was unsure of what she had done wrong this time. Azula growled deep in her throat and clutched at Ty Lee's wrists harder and harder until the grey-eyed woman whined in pain.

"Say it!" the prodigy demanded.

"No!"

Azula hissed and suddenly Ty Lee yelped and Azula laughed triumphantly, seeing threads of electricity sparking off of her fingers.

"My bending," she thought in rapturous disbelief.

"Say it!" Azula ordered, eyes wide with something like glee and rage, caressing the inside of Ty Lee's wrist while directing the whirling vortex of heat she felt building in her stomach toward her hands.

Ty Lee groaned, half in pain and half in pleasure as Azula pressed her thigh between the other woman's legs and the flesh of Azula's palms began to slowly burn Ty Lee's wrists.

"Azula, it hurts," she moaned, arms shifting away from Azula as her lower body shifted closer.

"Say it. I know you want to. Ty Lee, I'm burning you! Just say it, admit it! I'm a monster. Just say it!"

"No," Ty Lee said quietly, watching as Azula's face of stern determination crumbled into one of self-loathing insecurity.

Her grip loosened on Ty Lee and the acrobat pulled her arms from Azula's hands. Ty Lee inspected her wrists closely, noting the ring of red shaped like Azula's clenched handprints on her skin. It looked like a sunburn.

"Why?" Azula asked sullenly, closing her golden eyes when the acrobat reached up to stroke her face, brushing strands of hair behind her ears.

Using her surprising strength, Ty Lee wrapped her arms around Azula and pulled her into an embrace that Azula, at first, resisted. Sighing, Ty Lee nudged the joints in Azula's elbows with her own and the bender's arms buckled, wrapping around Ty Lee.

"Because I love you. Much, much more than I fear you. No matter what you do to me."

"No, you don't," Azula said gruffly, resting her chin on Ty Lee's shoulder.

"I do," Ty Lee hummed. "I bear the marks of it."

Azula let her eyes wander across Ty Lee's perfect skin, marred only by bruises, scratches, and bites she possessively left in her wake.

"But look at what I've done to you," Azula tried. "You give me everything I demand, and the only thanks you have to show for it is abuse. I threw you in prison, Ty Lee. Why don't you hate me yet?"

Ty Lee chuckled, leaning up and tracing kisses against Azula's jaw line and neck, something from which the proud bender usually would have flinched. Instead, Azula relaxed and let the kisses rain down.

"I learned a long time ago that that's just your way of showing affection," Ty Lee whispered into the dethroned princess' thick hair. "Remember that time when we were little when you shoved me into a mud puddle and then told me afterward it was because you were jealous because my dress was so pretty and I looked so nice in it?"

"Yes," Azula mumbled, blushing as she felt Ty Lee nip at her earlobe.

"And remember that time at the beach when we went with Mai and Zuko and we were at that party and we all went back to trash it after we got kicked out? You threw so many guys off of the balcony. And why, Azula?"

Ty Lee's tongue was tracing the whorls of Azula's ear, making her breaths come ragged and causing a hitch in them when she felt Ty Lee's strong fingers curling into her hair to pull her down flat against the smaller woman. They were pressed breast-to-breast and Azula was sure Ty Lee could feel her heart hammering wildly in her chest. She'd never been held quite like this before.

"Because they were flirting with you," she gritted, allowing Ty Lee to overpower her again (not that the spry woman really had to make much of an attempt) and clamber on top of Azula. "Because you were seeking their attention. Because you were lathering them up with compliments, instead of me. Because you're mine."

Ty Lee smiled, combing her fingers through Azula's hair, fanning it out like a calligraphist carefully, lovingly spreading black ink against red parchment.

"Remember when we first met? You said hello by pushing past me and calling me a peasant. We became friends because you yanked on my braid so hard that I cried, and you apologized without really apologizing," Ty Lee teased, leaning down to press open-mouthed kisses to Azula's collarbone.

"'I only did it because I want your hair'," Azula quoted. "'My father would never let me have hair that long; it would interfere with my bending.'"

"Exactly."

"You've never understood affection," Ty Lee mumbled into Azula's skin, "and I understand that about you. You're like the little boy who pulls a girl's pigtails to show that he likes her. You have a strange way of showing it."

Azula flared up immediately, huffing, "I am not a child, Ty Lee, and for you to imply that I have some sort of deficiency or that I am unable to understand affection is nothing short of preposterous. What is there to understand? It's a weakness, and a liabil-"

Ty lee understood Azula's immediate indignation, and silenced her with a deep, lingering kiss as an apology for ever implying that Azula lacked, was unable, deficient, or weak in any way.

"I don't mind being weak," Ty Lee whispered consolingly. "You can be strong enough for both of us. I do love you, you know."

Azula grunted in response, pointedly avoiding Ty Lee's gaze and only meeting it again when her eyes swiveled to meet the gymnast's in shock when she felt her small hands tugging at the belt of the robe Azula had adamantly refused to remove.

"Let me show you," Ty Lee murmured, stealing skin as her hands slid beneath Azula's robe and then gently tugged it off.

Swallowing hard and breathing deeply, Azula steeled herself as if Ty Lee had just threatened to fire punch her in the face. She panicked when she felt Ty Lee's hands on the bare, vulnerable skin of her ribcage and her lips on the swell of Azula's breast. Seizing Ty Lee's burned wrists, she pushed them away quickly. Wincing, the acrobat stopped and looked at Azula, who was panting as if she'd just done a thousand drills. Embarrassed, Azula crossed her arms over her naked breasts, flushed and frustrated. Ty Lee propped herself up on one elbow, leaning her weight into it and trailing her fingertips over the flat expanse of Azula's stomach, dipping into the valley of her hip. Azula twitched in a way that suggested she was unsure whether to move toward or away from the other woman.

"It's not your place," she said almost warningly, narrowing her eyes.

Ty Lee understood, knew that the warning was really fear and wariness because Azula was unsure.

"Then tell me you don't want it," Ty Lee dared. "Tell me to stop."

Azula glared at her, silent. Ty Lee only smiled, scooting closer and wrapping her leg around Azula's thigh and pinning her to her back again. Leaning down, Ty Lee pressed open-mouthed kisses to the tender flesh of Azula's neck, her grin widening as the bender moaned and arched into the acrobat's embrace.

"Why me?" Azula asked, sounding almost resentful.

The acrobat laved at her collarbone, hand slipping beneath the sheets to stroke the bare skin of Azula's thighs; it was unknown terrain, and her curious fingers happily explored the unfamiliar expanses.

"Why not you?" Ty Lee whispered roughly before claiming Azula's mouth.

Azula made a noise like a whimper and, embarrassed, she ducked her head only for Ty Lee to twist her body in a very Ty Lee way to reclaim Azula's carmine lips.

"You're dangerous," Ty Lee murmured, grinning impishly and kissing a trail down the rolling hills and valleys of Azula's heaving chest and stomach and to wetter, darker climes. "I ran away to the circus to be an acrobat, Azula. I like danger."

"Circus freak," Azula choked almost affectionately, eyes rolling into the back of her head as Ty Lee's teeth grazed her inner thigh. "Oh."

Suddenly, she was unsure as to why she had ever denied Ty Lee permission to touch her like this, so tenderly and powerfully, so possessively and claiming, so deeply, so thoroughly. It was everything she thought she had expected, and even some things she hadn't. Despite all of her bravado and aggression, Azula had never been touched by anyone like this.

"Ty Lee," she hissed, nails (now short and blunt) scrabbling at the grey-eyed woman's shoulders.

It was raw and painful, and muscles Azula didn't know she had in her jaw clenched and quivered as Ty Lee's powerful, lethal fingers pushed in and through, her lips traveling the warm skin of Azula's face and torso as she went, kissing away moans and gasps and, for a brief moment, what might have been tears (they were reflexive, a natural reaction to pain, of course). Ty Lee was patient and gentle, but firm, at once honoured and terrified to be Azula's first anything, let alone this. She kissed Azula's hip, fiercely biting it and marking the skin with her teeth to leave a mark red as the Fire Nation emblem before kissing her navel, then lower, and lower, and lower, and-

"Oh!" Azula breathed, forgetting what pain was for a second that felt like a lifetime as Ty Lee's tongue pressed between her thighs and her fingers moved in such a way that made coaxed a noise like a whimper from the proud woman's throat.

Ty Lee understood, and continued amid the firebender's broken, babbled appraisals. Azula wound her hands into Ty Lee's hair, gasping and undulating beneath the other woman's tongue and hands, bursts of flame burning behind her eyelids and torrents of lightning thrumming in her veins and nerves. Ty Lee moaned, sending vibrations coursing through Azula's flesh and tremors down her spine. A hard knot formed in Azula's belly, clenching tighter and tighter.

"Ty Lee," she gritted, jumping as the acrobat curled her fingers just right and then did it again, again, again.

A low, keening, howling moan erupted from Azula's throat wantonly and she flung her head back and to the side, biting hard into a pillow to muffle it as Ty Lee surfaced for air, mouth hanging open from astonishment, panting like a hungry animal.

"Azula," she growled, arm moving with the power and calculated efficiency of a piston.

Ty Lee had never imagined that the bender would be so sensitive to the touch, so responsive, so vocal.

"Don't stop," Azula sighed, sounding both commanding and helpless.

Bending down to press her mouth to the juncture of Azula's thighs again, Ty Lee persisted with a relentlessness and tirelessness that was borne of years of patient training at the circus and with the Kyoshi warriors to hone her acrobatic and martial arts prowess, and months of much more personal study with Azula. The honey-eyed princess cried out, words cinched in half and rendered incomprehensible by moans and gasps, her hands twining into her own hair, into the sheets, and then back into Ty Lee's hair, frenzied and unsure what to do with themselves. Azula throbbed, inside, outside- her entire body was throbbing, and the walls were pulsating in time. Ty Lee watched, amazed, as Azula seemed to lose control of her body as she bucked, hips rising and falling wildly as her muscles fluttered, tensed, relaxed, fluttered, tensed, relaxed. The rope that formed the knot in her belly frayed into a million tiny strings, sending fibers of heat swimming through Azula's entire body from her face to her toes, which curled irresistibly. The bender's breath stuck in her throat so she held it, cries silent for several seconds as shockwaves of pleasure overrode her, her voice only escaping when the desperation for air became too much and she gave voice to the rapture. Panting, Azula opened one eye lazily to observe Ty Lee, who was stroking her gently to bring her down. Ty Lee grinned and opened her mouth to speak, but Azula shook her head, too breathless for words. Ty Lee understood and, instead, lolled her head against the gasping woman's shoulder, kissing it gently.

"I love you," Ty Lee said at last, quietly, hesitantly this time.

Azula looked into Ty Lee's eyes, brushing sweat dampened bangs away from the brunette's forehead and kissing it in a rare show of tenderness. The acrobat smiled, pillowing her head on Azula's chest, listening to her shallow breathing and giggling when the other woman tugged firmly on her braid in a more familiar show of affection.

"I know," she replied softly, throat constricting.

It was the best she could do.

Ty Lee understood.


End file.
